You know, the guy with the ark (not of the Covenant). The guy who Steve Carrell is aping in a couple of weeks in Evan Almighty, perhaps the most expensive comedy in history. The guy who took animals, two by two, and saved them from the flood that God sent to wipe out every single human being on the planet.

Aronofsky has been interested in Noah ever since winning a United Nations contest at 13 with a poem told from his point of view. "Noah was the first person to plant vineyards and drink wine and get drunk," he tells The Guardian. "It's there in the Bible - it was one of the first things he did when he reached land. There was some real survivor's guilt going on there. He's a dark, complicated character."

Also there in the Bible is The Curse of Ham – no, not trichinosis, but a curse that Noah lay upon his son Ham’s offspring for the terrible sin of seeing the old man laying naked and drunk in his tent. Many people went on to use the Curse of Ham as a rationalization for slavery, as some believe that Africans are descended from Ham and his sons.

There’s no telling when Aronofsky will get to Noah – his next film is likely to be The Fighter, which would start this summer, and he has Black Swan, a ballet movie, slotted in there somewhere as well.